Ripples.

Yesterday, I remembered this story and how I wanted to share it with you here, but have never gotten around to posting it. Today, I rectify that error and post it for you...

I discovered this short story a few years ago (2004? 2005? I can't remember.) I was Googling my name (who doesn't?) and I came upon an interesting link.

There was a website for a Florida Summer Theater Camp program, that was using my name in one of their warm-up games. Apparently, they were playing "Bippity, Bippity, Bop", which I learned back in 2002 from IO, only the Floridians were calling it "Biddle Biddle Bop." Other than that change and their addition of a "mermaid" and "elephant" level of play, it was precisely like the version of "B.B.Bop" that I'd learned and had taught countless times.

And then I remembered that at my old high school, South Oldham High in Crestwood Ky, a couple of the kids in my weeklong improv intensive created their own variations on the "truck driver" rule. One of them was the "elephant" that the website listed.

I snooped around on the Florida website a little more and eventually found the name of one of my former students from SOHS working with the organization. A direct link from my Improv classes to this group. I suspected that it was her, who suggested that the title of the game might be called "Biddle Biddle Bop". I imagine that she couldn't remember the words that we actually used and substituted my name instead.

And so, students in this particular Floridian Drama Summer Program learn a game from IO, that now has my name in it. I'm waiting for the day that I meet one of them who moves to Chicago to pursue improv study and they say, "Your last name is Biddle? We learned this game back at Drama Camp that goes..."

I've been performing Improv, since my sophomore year of high school. That was 1990.
I joined my first professional, paying improv troupe the next year, 1991.
I taught my first improv class in my own high school in my senior year, 1992.

And I've taught countless classes since then, to a variety of classes, theaters and students. Fifteen years now, of study, teaching and performing this particular, little niche artform.

I am always aware when I am teaching, that I am dropping pebbles into a body of water that is vastly larger than me. I watch the ripples go outward and to my eyes, lessen and fade away. Very shortly, I can't see them at all.

But they don't stop. Not entirely.

They keep on going, bumping up against other ripples and creating new ripples that radiate out from them. Removed from me, my students have students of their own and in such a way, the improv philosophy that I believe in, is passed from person to person. A small legacy that I am building, which I guess, supercedes the legacy that I would've had, if I'd fathered a child or done something of actual some value.

It's just very unusual for one of those ripples to bounce back and to return to me, altered by its' journey and in this very rare instance, bearing my name. It's a sublime and rare joy to be in a position to know of this.

And now I'm telling you and you can enjoy this pleasure, with me.

Cheers,
Mr. B



For proof of what I'm talking about, you can see the notes on Biddle, Biddle Bop by clicking here and scrolling down.